GARDEN PLANNING BASICS | GETTING STARTED

Hey friends, welcome back to Bloomer Home and Garden, and today it is all about the garden. I typically get asked, especially this time of the year, how do I start a garden? Well, I have been gardening for over 40 years, and while I don't have all the answers, I have picked five great tips that are going to help you get started with your garden. If you are new here, now is a great time to click subscribe and ring that notification bell so we can alert you when a new video has been posted so you don't miss out on anything. If you are a returning subscriber, thanks so much for coming back by the farmhouse. Let's get started. It's time for me to start thinking about the gardening season. The best thing for me is to get out my trusty dusty notebook and start brain dumping. That is just putting all the ideas that are in my head out on paper so that I know exactly what I want to do. Then, once I have everything out of my head where I can actually think straight, then I start putting those in columns and boxes and everywhere I want them to go. Some good advice I want to offer to you is to get out your notebook and just start putting all your thoughts down on paper. Then, you can sort them out later once everything is out of your head and you have a clear vision of what you want to do. The first tip I have to share with you is all about location, location, location. This is critical in planting your garden for several reasons. First of all, you want to choose a nice flat level, well-drained area to plant your plot. Don't want too much of a hill or a slope because what happens is the plants that are planted up here get lots of rain and then the water washes down and it drowns out these plants down here. These dry out too quickly and these are always wet and depending on what is planted there, these may like more water, these may not like so much water and so you're going to have an issue trying to keep things happy while they're trying to grow. You want to choose a nice flat level area. Number two is you want to choose that flat level area in a spot that gets at least six hours of sunshine every day. Now, if you live in the south or the west where it gets extremely hot, your garden might be able to get away with a little shade in the afternoon. Typically, you want six hours of sunshine to reach your plant. They really need that sunshine to grow. An experiment you can do to make sure that your garden is going to get enough sunlight is to go ahead and mark off your plot with some stakes or some bricks or something where you know where your plot is and then monitor it several times a day. Just peek out the window and look and note at 1 30 is there sun, is at two o'clock is there sun, at 4 30 is there still sunlight on this garden. If you find that you don't have six hours of sunlight, you might want to rethink where you're going to put your plot. Number three in location is you want your garden close to a water source. Now, I don't know about you, but as I've gotten older, the romantic notion of carrying buckets of water to my garden really doesn't cut it anymore and I don't like carrying water. The one thing that is for certain in gardening is you cannot depend on the weather to water your garden. Your garden is going to need approximately an inch of water per week to be able to grow. Some plants like more water than others. Water is essential for your garden so you want to be sure that you can get a hose garden for watering and for watering I think a soaker hose is a great idea but if you don't have that don't worry and if you still have to carry water that's totally okay just be aware that you should do it and maybe collecting rainwater is a solution for you to have it close to your garden so you can use the rainwater to water your garden. The number two tip I have for you pertains to the question I get asked about how big should my garden be. The answer is going to depend on several variables that you're working with. If you are an urban gardener or you have a balcony or rather you have unlimited acres in the country, the size of your garden is going to depend on your location. It's going to depend on how much sunlight you get and it's going to depend on what you're going to be planting. Determining your garden size you're going to want to know how many people do you want to feed. I always say plant your garden feet by two feet wider than you think you want it to be because you're going to want to end up planting more. Understand that gardening is a lot of work so don't overdo it. Don't overwhelm yourself with too big of a plot that you're not going to be able to take care of. Tip number three is preparing your site. Now when you're first starting out you're most likely starting with just a flat patch of grass and somehow you have to get that all tilled over. So the beginning of preparing that site is going to be to get rid of that grass. The first tip I have for you is an all organic way to do this and that is to just put a big tarp down the sides of your garden and let the sun be on that for a couple days and that will kill the grass and that makes it easier to rototill. If you do not want to fight with any grass roots at all the best solution is to remove the sod that is the grass and the few inches under it that contain all the root systems for that grass so that grass cannot grow again. Do this with a shovel or a sod cutter and there might even be people in your community who rent their services out to do this if that is an option for you. Number three is to use a chemical sterilization. Do have lots of organic options for sterilizing the grass and the soil around it. If you do not want to choose an organic method you can use something like Roundup but do not use a ground clear because that is very potent and it will stay in the soil and end up killing anything that you plant later. Once the grass is taken care of you're going to want to rototill that garden. You want to till it under and make it viable for planting your little seeds in. If you don't have a rototiller check Marketplace. There are people in each community who offer rototilling services for a very small fee. Our family we have a large rototiller. Everybody in the family takes turns using it. It's a win-win for everyone so maybe you have a family member who has a rototiller or this might be something if a garden is something that you are really sure you want to do it is a great investment. They last forever. Mine is currently almost 20 years old and it's still growing so rototiller is a great investment to have. Fourth tip I have is a question that I get a lot. What is in my soil? Well there are lots of ways to determine what is in your soil. There are several soil tests that you can do to determine what is in your soil. There are very basic with just your pH. There are a little more complex. My next video is going to be on soil testing so be sure to watch for that video coming up. You can get more complex testings from your garden center. You could also send into your cooperative extension office or your agricultural office. There are labs that you can take your soil and send to. Now those are pretty pricey and if you are really into knowing exactly what is in your soil those are a good way to go but for most of us just a very simple test can do. There are also other tests to determine the kind of soil that you have. What are you planting in? Are you planting in clay, sand, or loam and what do you need to do to amend your soil? Amending your soil just means fixing what you have, adding in certain nutrients that you want to make sure that are there for the plants. It's pretty vital to know what you have before you add anything into your soil. You want to make sure that you have that test done and you know what you have before you add. For instance, if your soil is already high in nitrogen you certainly don't want to add fertilizer to that with a high nitrogen content. Testing your soil is critical in planning your garden. The last tip I have for you is a question I get asked every year. That question is what do I plant? That is a simple answer. What do you want to grow? If you are just starting out you don't want to overwhelm yourself. You want to plant the things that you know you're going to use. If you have a small plot you don't want to plant too much. My suggestion is plant the things you like to eat. If radishes are not your favorite you probably don't want to plant radishes. If you sit down with your family and ask them what are the things that they like to eat? Tomatoes, cucumbers, pumpkins. Make a list of the things that you know you're going to enjoy from your garden. Again, as I said in the beginning, you don't want to add too much too soon and overwhelm yourself. So start out small with the things that you know you're going to eat. Secondly, you want to know the purpose from your garden. Do you just want a few things that you can pick out of your garden for a summer salad? Are you planning to make salsa? Is it crucial for you to put away food for your family? Are you going to be canning, freezing, dehydrating, these kind of things? These are a few of the things that you should consider when you're thinking about what you should plant. Make a list of your favorite things and plant those. Now, if you want to expand and go ahead and plant some novelty items like Indian corn or certain squashes, foot sponges, and birdhouse gourds and all of those things, you can certainly expand and do all those things. You just want to take that into consideration when you're planning both the size and what you should plant in your garden. Well, friends, these are the five tips that I have for you. I hope I've answered all your questions. If you have more questions and you want to go deeper and you would like a part two, let me know in the comments any questions that you may have, and I would love to put together a second video to answer any more of your gardening questions.